Hello,
At the 20 July teleconference [1], Eric Hansen suggested that
the UA Guidelines (presumably including the 7 July draft [2])
uses the terms style/content inconsistently:
"In some places, we don't distinguish style and content, in
others we do. We need to elaborate our definition of content."
The definition of "content" in that draft says that
"content refers to the document object as a whole or in parts."
The document object definition says that "the document object
is the user agent's representation of data (e.g., a document)."
This would include style sheets. I think we should leave this
definition as is.
For distinguishing structure from presentation (both conveyed
in content) I propose that we do what was done in the
Authoring Tool Guidelines, which defines the terms structural
markup [3] and presentation markup [4]. I propose that we
reuse or adapt those definitions (quoted below) as necessary.
All of this relates to issue 297 [5], which is entitled
"Style v. content and background sounds" (the title needs fixing
since it opposes style and content).
The question is how much UA control is required over certain
types of content, notably when that content is used to achieve
a presentation effect? I think that the answer depends on the
type of content:
1) Users need full control of content whose purpose is not a
presentation effect. The first question is: can we distinguish
content intended for a presentation effect from content not
intended for a presentation effect? My answer would be: the
best we can do is rely on what we can recognize as being
for style: HTML transitional elements and attributes,
style sheets, known non-standard markup such as bgsound.
(Yes, authors may misuse structural markup for a presentation
effect and vice-versa.)
Note that I don't have a term for "content not intended for
a presentation effect." I think we tend to use the term
"content" (meaning "having information") here, and that's the
source of the inconsistency. We can oppose style and structure,
and style with non-style. Do we need a term for "non-style"?
(I hope we don't.)
I would also note that this discussion sounds a little like the
discussion about content meant for humans v. content meant for
machines. Refer to Al's comments on this topic [7]:
"The distinction between data (raw content) and meta-data
(markup) is an artifact of the view assumed by the author.
There is no fundamental semantic difference between what is
called data vs. metadata. They both play the same role as
bearers of information Semantically, it is all just
one class of data. This is a little-understood fact of
information science."
Al, will you make the same comment about an assertion that
presentation v. non-presentation (or structure)?
2) Users also need control of content whose purpose is for presentation,
but the level of control depends on the nature of the content
(I would argue). In some cases, "on/off" control may not
suffice for providing access. For example, the user needs to be
able to select a font family that provides access (and can't
just turn off fonts). In other cases, I think that on/off control
suffices; access is made possible by being able to turn off
blinking content, animations used for decoration, and background
sounds used for decoration. While fine tune control might be
useful, I think that a requirement to turn off the interfering
content
is the Priority 1 requirement.
I think my proposal for issue 5 that arose during the
Mac IE evaluation [6] is still appropriate in this light.
- Ian
P.S. The proposal should include a comment that independent
control of volume for different audio sources should NOT be
required for background sounds. The user must be able to
configure the UA to not render this merely decorative sound,
and that should suffice.
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000JulSep/0097.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-UAAG10-20000707
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-ATAG10-20000203/#def-structural-markup
[4]
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-ATAG10-20000203/#def-presentation-markup
[5] http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/ua-issues/issues-linear.html#297
[6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000JulSep/0060.html
[7] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0210.html
--
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel: +1 831 457-2842
Cell: +1 917 450-8783
"Structural markup" is markup language that encodes information
about the structural role of elements of the content. For
example, headings, sections, members of a list, and components
of a complex diagram can be identified using structural
markup. Structural markup should not be used incorrectly to
control presentation or layout. For example, authors should not
use the BLOCKQUOTE element in HTML [HTML4] to achieve an
indentation visual layout effect. Structural markup should be
used correctly to communicate the roles of the elements of
the content and presentation markup should be used separately to
control the presentation and layout."
"Presentation markup" is markup language that encodes
information about the desired presentation or layout of the content.
For example, Cascading Style Sheets ([CSS1], [CSS2]) can be
used to control fonts, colors, aural rendering, and graphical
positioning. Presentation markup should not be used in place of
structural markup to convey structure. For example, authors should
mark up lists in HTML with proper list markup and style them with
CSS (e.g., to control spacing, bullets, numbering, etc.). Authors
should not use other CSS or HTML incorrectly to lay out content
graphically so that it resembles a list.